A Five Part Series Based on Insights from Independent Research Firm for PR Newswire
Part Two: Getting in Front of Individual Investors

In my last blog post, I mentioned that recently PR Newswire commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a survey (PR Newswire: Web Site User Analysis & Opportunities, September 29, 2010) of our web audiences on PRNewswire.com and PR Newswire for Journalists (PRNJ.com). The purpose of the survey was to understand more about our user demographics; their current habits on the web and what they were looking for in the future.

This is part two in the series of five that I mentioned in the first post. This week we are going to have a look at the answers from our retail or individual investor audience on PRNewswire.com.

Before I do that though, I would like to share some more general demographic information we learned from our Forrester Consulting survey. An overwhelming majority of our survey respondents, 85%, were from North America. They have an evenly split income range with each answer (100,000+, $99,999 – $50,000, up to $49,999, and I would prefer not to answer) taking just about 25% a piece. They are slightly skewed male and their age range is from 35 to 54 years old.

To identify the different audiences, PR Newswire and Forrester Consulting, asked users to tell us why they came to site. Thirteen percent of our users said they came to PRNewswire.com looking for information about a company as an investment. With investment houses using different sets of research tools, we assumed these investors were on their own.

This information matched our web analytics and past surveys we conducted without the help of Forrester Consulting, so we were not terribly surprised to know that individual investors were using our site in these numbers. What is surprising is that 81% of the individual investors we surveyed were male and older than our general web site population and the majority at an age range of 45 to 64 years of age. As a result of the Forrester Consulting data, we now have a pretty good persona for our individual investors.

When we asked the PRNewswire.com investor audience how they found the page they were on, 66% of them answered Google. This speaks to the power of search engines and the visibility news releases have on the search engine optimized PRNewswire.com versus other web sites. The Forrester Consulting survey also told us that these investors are repeat customers. As a result of their Google habits, 62% of them visit the site on a regular basis (daily or weekly) with 38% of these investors visiting PRNewswire.com daily.

This is extremely valuable information, not only for PR Newswire but also for investor relations professional s trying to get in front of this audience. Individual investors are not just looking for the financial media’s commentary on company’s news releases; they are looking to get the news straight from the company source as well. So if you are in investor relations and need to engage retail investors, look no further than PR Newswire.

On tap for next week – insights from the survey on the consumer audience, including how consumers looking for product information find their way to PRNewswire.com and your press releases – so be sure to come back and check it out.